The Asian Conference on Ethics, Religion & Philosophy 2013 Official Conference Proceedings
Osaka, Japan
Introduction. It is our goal to abridge in two different sections – first Ancient World, Biblical Times, Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and second Modernity and Contemporaneity – relevant notes about the exposed total Re-Ligare and scarce Connectedness that constituted Judaism. We shall not be captured exclusively by these time frames, but instead, through the direction of Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas, Philosophers of the tribe, dissert from the start in retrospective, attending to the special sense of Philosophy of time, contracted and expanded, as if, contrary to natural embryological Law, Phylogeny recapitulated Ontogeny, that such a concept as Prophecy in Judaism holds and commands. In overview, we shall assert Judaism intrinsically as Philosophy of Judaism, capable of, almost in stuttering reverence to a self-inflicted sense of History, reconciling the inexpressible with speech, the Book with dialogue, communication with silence, as all throughout Prophecy with History, in such a way that eloquently emulated, in the realm only of Religion, the two most prominent paradigms of adequatio: the Aristotelian-Scholastic and the Darwinian-Natural Empirical versions. This distinctive aspect has strongly augmented the original bond of Re-Ligare. Ancient World, Biblical Times, Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Usually one tends, from the aseptic neutral eye of Secularism (often Atheism or Agnosticism) to consider Buddhism as the most unambiguous case of a complimentary assistance, perhaps a half way through stone, between Religion and Philosophy. Time and again this observation leads to suggesting Philosophy as the natural perfected path to which Religion eventually leads. Nevertheless, from the eyes of an atheist, Judaism should minimally be considered one perfected Religion, in the sense that the ַ( מָ שִׁ יחMessiah) will never arrive, and so, tempting a rabbinic sense of humour, it is a Religion valid for the eternity of time. In more conceptual terms, the distinction of Judaism as compared to other Religions approves a fulfilment of the time of History that takes in a much more deep existential religious and secular quest, with equal maximal bonds to orthodoxy and orthopraxis. This is very much opposed to the physicalist Aristotelian and, in the outcome, Theist conception of a semper existens time, equivalent to attributing (in the same sense of Scholastic and Modern Philosophy attributus), plainly, History to Mankind, sensualising time and faith. This went often to the degree of vanishing Religion into old φύσις (Philosophy of Nature) and demising eternity into immobility or, at least, non-miraculous expectedness. This was to set free the foundations for Theodicy (Leibniz) and the Absolute (Hegel), which are, though, the closest of the concepts of Philosophy of Time to Prophetic Judaism in Continental Philosophy, to show only Philosophy of Religion and Rationalism mutual argumenta. If paid attention, it becomes evident that Judaism never suffered significant Scepticism, except when the Philosophy of Judaism was, both before the השכלה (Haskalah) and the Scientificist Wissenschaft des Judentums, excommunicated to Natural Philosophy, as Judaism did so to Spinoza, or otherwise dramatically infringed upon biblical and rabbinical orthodoxy, as happened under Louis IX and at the time of the Great Exile in Medieval France, still with Vilna Gaon´s antagonism to Hasidism in the XVIIIth century, or a combination of both, as came to pass with Uriel da Costa in the XVIIth century Amsterdam. Moreover, Judaism, all the way through different Ages, was capable of remaining in substantia, i.e., in the core of the Monotheist rock, appealing to all sorts of different naturalistic ontology modi, secularly expanded, and in the root, philosophically attributing, i.e., intellectually transferring and ascribing.
116